Why Africa is ill-prepared for the World Cup

From South Africa by Charles le Roi

Sitting in the shadow of Cape Town's magnificent new stadium in the aftermath of the sickening attack on the Togo team bus in Cabinda, I wondered how long it would take before the media focus would come to rest on the implications for South Africa 2010. The locals wondered too and the radio shows were immediately filled with comment on how the events in Angola have absolutely no bearing on this summer's (in the Northern hemisphere at least...) World Cup, except perhaps in the over-active imaginations of foreign news editors. South Africa is free from terrorism. South Africa has no secessionist enclaves hosting World Cup matches. South Africa has invested millions in security preparations. Cabinda is 3000km from South Africa. ETA bomb attacks in Spain don't lead to media questioning the suitability of Germany or France as World Cup host countries.
 
True. Not that I know of. Correct. At least. Of course not. But Africa is still ill-prepared for the World Cup. I'll give you two reasons why:
 
1. The African teams are uncompetitive. At the time of writing (looking at the situation up to Jan 14) the opening games of the African Cup of Nations had not gone well for the teams who have qualified for South Africa. Ivory Coast drew with Burkina Faso, whose average position since the creation of the FIFA World Ranking is 82. Nigeria were outclassed by Egypt, who were eliminated in World Cup qualifying by Algeria. Who lost their opening game to Malawi, participating in only their second ever Cup of Nations tournament. Cameroon lost 1-0 to Gabon. Ghana were meanwhile readying themselves for their first outing of the tournament. South Africa of course failed even to qualify.

Bafana Bafana, as they are known here, are a serious cause of national concern. Carlos Alberto Parreira has been called in to try to ensure that the team does not become the first host nation ever to be eliminated in the opening round. In the absence of a competitive tournament to test his troops, Parreira has called the squad together for a training camp this month. Unfortunately for the Brazilian he has no access to the overseas-based players and so the squad is entirely domestic in composition: 8 players from Mamelodi Sundowns, 7 from the Orlando Pirates, 4 from SuperSport United, and so on. It will be May, at the earliest, before he gets to work with the likes of Benni McCarthy, Steven Pienaar, Aaron Mokoena and Elrio van Heerden.

2. Africans aren't buying tickets. Although FIFA has foreseen provisions allowing for over-the-counter ticket sales in South Af, these facilities are as yet unavailable. With the local black population - the main football supporters - having limited access to the internet, very few tickets have been sold despite ticket prices being considerably lower than in Germany four years ago. There are fears that local supporters will be outnumbered in the stadium by the English, German, Dutch and other European fans.

If ticket sales in South Africa are slow, they are practically stalled in other African countries. Many of those who could theoretically afford to travel are being priced out by the prohibitive deposits required to secure a visa for South Africa. The spectre of predominantly white crowds at a tournament intended to symbolise the emergence of a free, fair and democratic multi-racial South Africa looms.

Comments

[wim]

I’d just recall that this article was written a couple of months back (posted January 16) and the situation is bound to have evolved since.

Looking at the ticketing news made available on FIFA.com on 5 February (which seemed to refer just to the third ticketing sales phase):
“A total of 1,206,865 tickets have been requested from 192 countries by the general public (excluding those tickets that have been sold through the participating teams to their fans). Of this total, 585,175 tickets were drawn successfully, and 413,072 (70.6 per cent) of those were allocated to South African residents.

Outside the host country, the United States received the highest number of tickets drawn (35,262), followed by the United Kingdom (21,614), Mexico (11,893), Australia (11,804), Germany (9,692), Brazil (5,891), Canada (4,642), France (4,268) and Israel (3,677). In Africa, Botswana remains the leading country behind the hosts, with a total of 1,587 tickets drawn, followed by Mozambique (1,142). Kenya completes the top three African countries with 785 tickets.”

FIFA said on 27 January that there had been “an increase of 24.9 per cent in applications from South African residents in the third sales phase when compared to the earlier ticketing stages.”

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/ticketing/news/newsid=1166666.html#fourth+ticket+sales+phase+starts+february
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/ticketing/news/newsid=1162835.html#two+million+tickets+sold+2010+fifa+world+cup+south+africa

[Charles le Roi]

the core point of the article is that Africa, rather than South Africa, is not really ready for the world cup. I don't think that there will be great numbers travelling from other african countries and that is a pity.

as implied in the article, I think South Africa itself is more or less ready and i think europeans and others should travel despite any lingering fears about safety or any reservations about flying all that way only to arrive in winter....

[RB]

Yeah, your point about the Africans not buying tix is not true at all, and is actually much higher than anticipated and higher than the internation tix sales.

I'd be more worried about transport than anything else. A lot of new systems going in, largely untested, and with extreme loads placed upon them.

[Milo]

South Africans have bought half of all the tickets sold thus far and that figure would be more if FIFA's stupid application process had not turned down so many applications. I have been unsuccessful 4 times now....so please do proper research before publishing.